Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on May 21, 2008 – 7:06 am | by FICA |

The new NAMA (Non-Agricultural Market Access) text released by the Chairman of the NAMA negotiations Ambassador Don Stephenson yesterday is a comprehensive document and attempts to bring on board the views of all members. However the new text dilutes the ‘Para 8′ flexibilities available to developing nations according to Mr. R. Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) WTO and Trade Agreements committee.

He said the trade-off between the coefficients and flexibilities as proposed in the new text go against the development dimension of the Doha declaration. Mr. Gopalakrishnan added that proposing a set of coefficients 23-26 without any flexibilities goes against the accepted development principles in the Round.

The new limit on the total import value for flexibilities also negates the objective of having a document that will deliver on the development dimension. He added that inclusion of a clause that flexibilities provided cannot be used to exclude entire HS chapter or heading at four-digit level from full formula cut is a regressive clause.

CII is also of the view that the current set of coefficients provided to developed countries does not reflect the ambition in the Round.

Incentivising sectoral negotiations, which have not been supported by developing nations, has not been a good step said Mr. Gopalakrishnan. CII doesn’t support negotiations on tariff eliminations for a few sectors.

Referring to the new proposal on remanufactured goods by Japan, US and Switzerland enclosed in the new NAMA text, Mr. Gopalakrishnan said that CII is against any proposal that attempts to liberalise trade in remanufactured goods and added that there is need for far greater study on this issue before including it as part of negotiations.

On the new text on Agriculture released by the chairperson of the agricultural negotiating group, Amb. Crawford Falconer, Mr. Gopalakrishnan said that the issue of special products and special safeguard mechanism has not been addressed to the satisfaction of developing countries and it would require revisiting by the members.

Mr Gopalakrishnan said that CII fully supports the conclusion of the Doha Round this year and hopes that the Round will deliver on the development objective in the negotiations that will follow in next few weeks.